The Last Days of Il Duce by Domenic Stansberry Page B

stopped here to catch his breath. He wheezed and coughed a little, then pointed at me with his cigarette.
    â€œYour father, they called him to the stand. 1942. Mr. Snitch, he told the USA a list of names. Supposed fascists.”
    â€œHe wanted to protect my mother.”
    â€œNo. He did it because your mother was in love with that son of a bitch Micaeli Romano. Your father wanted to punish all the Italians at Fugazi Hall. But I don’t blame him, no. The Committee knew his weakness, they had him by the balls.”
    I was getting tired of Johnny Bruno. He’d a sly look on his face, a bitter old man up to no good in the world.
    â€œIs that what you talked about with my brother?”
    â€œA little bit.”
    â€œThat all?”
    â€œI’m telling you now. Everything. There were rumors you know, when you were born.…”
    â€œThe rumors are wrong.”
    I knew what was coming and cut him off hard. I had heard this story before, when I was about sixteen years old. I didn’t believe it then and didn’t believe it now, but I had computed out the years once, adding them up in my head to see if it were possible Micaeli Romano was my father. It wasn’t. I had been born after the war, my brother two years after that, and all this while Micaeli had still been overseas, serving on the American mop-up crews in Italy. Anyway I had my father’s short nose, his Anglo eyes, his Irish feet. I do not look anything like Micaeli.
    â€œThe day the Japs hit Pearl Harbor, all that smoke was coming out the radio, so the police buzzed North Beach. They rounded us up. Took us to Sharp Park, we could see the Japs and the Germans the other side of the chain fence. Six weeks before there’s even a hearing. But Micaeli, they let him out in two days. His father’s money.
    â€œPapa Romano, he was the biggest fascist of them all. Visited Italy and kissed Il Duce’s ring. So we were glad when his son, young Micaeli, the lawyer, gets himself sprung. We figure it won’t be long before he springs us too.”
    â€œPapa Romano renounced fascism. Micaeli.…”
    â€œIt was a lie. We got messages all the time in jail. ‘Romano is still with you. Long live Il Duce!’ This kind of shit. Only Micaeli never helped us. He was playing it both ways. Just seeing how the war would go.”
    This story too was one I’d heard before and so had my brother. It was a story Johnny Bruno had been telling for years, to anyone who would listen, and I was put out with myself for taking the bait. I didn’t want to listen anymore.
    â€œI am not finished. You want I should pour you a little wine?”
    â€œI have to go, Johnny.”
    â€œDrink the wine, humor an old man. Maybe I tell you something you don’t already know.”
    Johnny Bruno covered a cough and poured the wine. A gleam of triumph, small and mean, emerged in his eyes. He didn’t get to tell his story much anymore, but he knew he had me, because I wanted to hear everything my brother had heard.
    â€œIt was 1953. Everybody had forgotten the war, but then Luci Pavrotti comes to town. You know, Pavrotti, Mussolini’s general?”
    I didn’t know but Johnny Bruno explained. General Pavrotti had been in the catacombs the day of the Rome Massacre, when 350 Italians were rounded up by the Nazis. The way Johnny Bruno told the story, Pavrotti had been tricked into helping with the roundup, but when he discovered the Nazi’s intentions, he stepped in front of their bayonets. “The Germans dare not fire,” said Bruno, “Pavrotti was Il Duce’s favorite general.” A meeting was held, a compromise reached. What was repulsive to the Italians in the catacombs was not to die, but to die at the hands of the Germans. So the women were set free, and the Italian men lined up to be killed at the hands of Pavrotti.
    â€œKill me now,” each man said in turn (or so claimed Johnny Bruno).